Most knowledge producing organizations have a project oriented value chain that utilizes the expertise of different line functions to contribute to the end result. Since the expert line functions are using different information systems to efficiently carry out their tasks, there is a need for an information system that can integrate and preserve the obtained digital information in a flexible and easy way. The need is both to preserve data for extended time periods, and to be able to easily re-use them in new constellations. This problem is a reality in most cumulative knowledge building activities ranging from the academic world to commercial pharmaceutical research. However, it is also an identified problem in modern healthcare, where vital patient information may come from many different laboratory or hospital systems, but still need to be stored, integrated and re-used for a lifetime.
Current technologies for addressing these problems are based on relational databases or object oriented databases. These technologies have proved very efficient in creating systems for data transaction and reporting. However, they are not designed for long time storage and an open integration between different systems, and they are not easily altered to accommodate new types of data. Although object-oriented databases handle objects, they are not suitable for integration of different types of objects in a distributed environment. The reason for this is that in an object-oriented database fixed classes have to be defined, and all data has to fit into the structure of those classes. Searching is difficult since the user needs to know in which class and in which attribute data should be searched for. Relations between objects are “fixed links” which must be known a priori.
Hence, neither of these technologies is suitable for obtaining the ease of integration between distributed databases that is the demand. There is clearly a need to improve the situation by suggesting technologies that are more focused on keeping and integrating individual knowledge elements into accumulated knowledge.